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Hence, the visitors and the staff can be seen as objects of information constituted in and
through Ikea’s store narrative, rather than as subjects shaped in social interactions with others
(Foucault, 1979). Similar to conventional objects like a flowerpot or a wineglass, a narrative
includes actions that the persons employing it are able to reflect around and, thus, assign
meaning. In this sense the narratives that constitute the subject are objectified in the same
intertextual realm as the conventional objects. Turned into objects ourselves it is possible to
negotiate with other objects, such as those in the store environment.
The showrooms in the children’s department were bordering the restaurant where lots of
people were eating. The restaurant at Ikea is an open space resembling a self-service canteen
with a high noise level and slightly chaotic appearance. Given the large amount of people
environment includes different narratives, thus calling for different actions. During lunchtime
one Wednesday, when we visited the store, the area was full of retired couples and businesslike
dressed men and women, perhaps working at Ikea or in the area nearby. These people
may have preferred eating in a quieter environment without the noise of the children. Ikea
seemed to meet this preference by allocating the children to a separate part of the restaurant
where a playing area was set up including a slide and a miniature red stove. Older couples
positioned themselves far away from the playing section, even though it was empty at the
time for our visit. Children were arbitrarily seated around the room. This act can be seen as an
input to the ongoing negotiation with Ikea about the organization of the restaurant space.
Setting up the playing section in the restaurant may be taken as an invitation to settle a
compromise of the allocation of people in the restaurant from Ikea’s side. If no one wants to
play there, the area will have to be removed. It thus seems hard for Ikea and the visitors to
steer negotiations autonomously each other.
The Volatile Compromise
Thus far we have sought to illustrate that the sense making of the store involves a compromise
between retailer and visitors. By means of acting upon the store narrative in the present,
visitors negotiate actions taken by Ikea in the past, which suggestively will lead to new
corporate actions in the future. The moment we enter the Ikea store, the active negotiation
between the store narrative and us begin. We read signs as well as actions performed by other
visitors and staff in order to guide our own actions and feelings about the situation. Although
we had visited the Ikea store many times before it was as if previous compromises on how to
behave in the store needed to be re-settled. After all we are not familiar with the marks the
actions of others have left on the narratives since our last visit. In this sense every visit is the
first. Narratives mediate the negotiation between Ikea and store visitors. These negotiations
do not occur in direct face-to-face interaction but in the way fragments of texts are organized
into various narratives of the store or what we here would like to call compromises.
Compromises come about when the store narrative is acted upon in ways that changes its
linear direction (as in the case of the man reaching the toilets or the apology from Ikea) or
when the narrative latch on to other narratives in unpredictable ways (as was seen in how the
store narrative resembled an outdoor playground). Therefore, we regard the compromises that
make up the image of the store as non-linear and disjointed. As previously pointed out, texts
have intentions, however since the author seldom is present when the text is read s/he has
little influence over its ultimate meanings. The compromise becomes the agreement about the
subjective narratives, which allocate the reader and the text in discourses 1 . Dorothy Smith
(1999) proposes that compromises are reconciled from multiple narratives that reveal the
many-sided versions of the world from fragmented discursively constituted subject positions.
1 We use a broad definition of discourse according to Foucault’s understanding of discourse as an order of
concepts and constituted objects that build its own system of relations which impose themselves on subjects.
As a result discourse when articulated is constitutive of subjects.
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